Saturday, January 12, 2013

Another poisoning

You'll note in this photo that the bird is not standing quite normally. That's because FRANNIE has severe lead poisoning. She's also wearing some "slippers" on her feet to keep her toes open. One of the signs of advanced lead poisoning is the inability to open their feet.

This amazingly beautiful nine month old Golden Eagle female apparently found food at either a hunters discarded gut pile or possibly a rabbit left after being shot. Unfortunately the raptors pay the price because there is no law preventing the use of lead in big game bullets or .22 rifles. Copper or steel is a much better choice.

Lead is accumulative so any ingested at some point in their life will be added to whatever comes next until the bird slowly dies from being unable to catch food. FRANNIE's knuckles were very abraded after walking around on her fists for some time. She also only weighed 7#10oz which is about three pounds less than she should weigh.

This eagle was started on a product, EDTA, to help leach the lead from her system but that entails six shots a day for three days, three days off, three days on, etc. At this point she starts her second session tomorrow. She's shown some improvement in trying to stand and is now able to eat small, whole mice or larger ones cut up on her own. Hopefully she will recover from this devastating problem

Followers

In Loving Memory....

About Me

Born in Downers Grove, IL, I moved to Cody in 1981 after living in Boulder, CO for many years. As I enjoyed the outdoors and spent many weeks up in Wyoming going on horsepacking trips with friends, I decided to move here. I started Ironside Bird Rescue in 1987 after finding an orphaned Starling baby that had fallen out of its nest near my house. One thing led to another and after all these years the facility now has many different sized mews and flight barns for the exercise of raptors so they will be strong enough for release. I live in a 130+ year old log cabin with a corgi mix dog, her mother, a purebread corgi, a couple cats and many birds in a free flight aviary attached to the house. I'm now retired from a "real job". Along with rehabbing birds, I spend a lot of hours volunteering at our local Buffalo Bill Historical Center in the graphics department.